


The House of Ash

by FickleFriend



Category: Kuroshitsuji (2014), Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Drama, F/M, Historical, M/M, Mystery, Psychological Drama, Suspense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2020-11-08 23:42:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20843978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FickleFriend/pseuds/FickleFriend
Summary: At the end of their lives, a boy, a soldier, a streetwalker, a chimney-sweeper, and a tailor stumble upon a place lost to memory. They each stay at the House to gamble their names for a chance at regaining what they lost. The Proprietor alone holds the key to their fortunes.One day, the nameless Proprietor encounters a peculiar blue-eyed boy with more pride than sense and enough stubbornness to outlast a creature without concept of time. In meeting each other, they each might find the things they were looking for all along.





	1. The House

Beyond the great rolling hills and the end of starlight, amid the sleep-wet eye of a lush valley and an endless lake, at the blush of summer and March of frost, sits a small little boarding-house, dark against the night sky and fragile as dew. The trees shiver with their bright white bones to shake off the hypnotic lull of a winter passed. Gaze upon it, and it appears to be an extension of the land. It rests on a four-fingered frame and arches its spine in a noble bow. Its brow gently slopes with delicate determination. Sometimes, when the grass stills its song, it can be heard purring. The sound is plaintive and low, and when it comes, it comes from somewhere behind the throat, and the little house must still its breathing for two soft heartbeats. 

It has been there as long as anyone can remember and it is said that fortunes are gained and paid in its halls. They speak of it in hushed tones and the warm companionship formed by secrecy. The intimate bonds are made and unmade the moment whispers fade into unmusical speech and the strange familiarity of night dissipates. 

Generation after generation, the little house fades into obscurity, until it is forgotten folklore. Supposedly the verses spoke their knowledge of its origin and purpose, but it passed on the sinking breath of the last elder. The records of its residents too have been lost. The only knowledge now is the warm memory of time that flowed like amber and the dim glow of carmine eyes. 

Over there, the day never breaks and so the house has never aged. All in all, it should have been completely lost to time, unremarkable in size, shape, story, and stature as are all immortal things. But there was one small peculiar trait. No one could agree on what the little house, or its nameless Proprietor looked like. 

Sometimes, it was a perched Antebellum, other times an intimidating Gothic. Yet someone else would still say the house had sliding rice-paper screens and the irresistible allure of the far east.

When they first spoke of the little boarding-house, they did not yet know of a Proprietor. Perhaps nature felt that life expelled in breath was life wasted, and so he came into being the way Osiris did, all ash and mist, not earth and clay like the Greek or Romans knew. He first appeared in many different forms, and to this day does not recognize which shape is his native one. 

It is said that fortunes are gained and paid in its halls. The Proprietor can reveal any lie and bury any truth. He spins miracles and wonders terrible and beautiful enough to withstand eternity.

He does not speak unless spoken to, does not move without command, and does not ask without answering. He is like a mirror, or better yet, a precious stone of infinite reflections so that he may take on any shape and none in particular, to be no one and become anyone. 

For many years, he has no company but himself in that little boarding-house. When a guest does come, he does not burden them with unwanted company and never asks them to stay. But sometimes, it seems as though he must be very lonely. To the few who have heard his fate, not to know one’s true face must be a horrible tragedy. To others, a merciful relief. But no one can know his true thoughts, because how could a creature of earth and clay and flesh and bone guess at the reality of a being made entirely of ash and mist? 

It does not matter from where or whence they came. He welcomes each guest with utmost propriety and shows them to his or her room. The furnishings are always perfect and service unimpeachable. Every effort is made to satisfy the requests, spoken and unspoken, of the ones who wander into that lost place. No matter how outrageous the demand, he has never once complained. 

All of those wishes and desires, no matter how cruel or twisted, are easily achieved. It is strange that he never uses that mysterious power for himself, as if there was almost nothing that could be conceived that would satisfy the hunger in the belly of a beast without form. 

_ Almost. _

See, there was only one thing that seemed to keep the starvation at bay. Fortunes are gained and paid in its halls. 

All you must do is tell him your name.


	2. The Boy

That was how more than a thousand years passed between the departure of the last guest and the arrival of the young man who was just merely a boy, with eyes as deep and blue as the lake the house sat in. 

Until the boy arrived at the boarding-house, he entertained the unceasing currents of time by playing with words and letting them dance on the cupid’s bow of his upper lip, by rolling them on his tongue, letting them move forward and behind his sharp teeth, and tasting the names and wondering if he enjoyed the flavors that lingered over his alabaster skin and underneath neat fingernails. 

The boy arrives without fanfare. He walks in a unyielding straight line from hill to valley to shore to garden to the little boarding-house’s grand double doors. He takes the large armchair by the window, its plush-backed seat so large and austere for his small frame, and waits to be served his tea.

His first words were, “How may I return?” And if it is a question, he must answer. 

“Return where? Return when?”

He speaks like a marvelous bird and foolish man.

“I do not want what is already lost. Return me to the end, and I will continue what I began.” 

His little voice echoes imperiously in the blind expanse of the parlor that was all too big and round for the modest four-fingered scaffold. He takes a patient sip of a spiced Earl Gray with two spoonfuls of sugar that was just right for the sweet tooth he had yet to grow out of. One spoonful to mask the bitterness, and the second spoonful to remind him of the rot that would settle in his small white teeth.

The Proprietor retrieves the china when the boy finishes and shows him to his rooms. The boy wants to sleep. He leads him in the dark past somber portraits of glowering men and stately women. The figures that decorate the hall share in the features of the opposite sex and thus were distinguished by an unearthly beauty. The men are long-limbed and delicate featured, while the women handsome and fair. They were painted young, at the point when youth passed perfectly into maturity with the confidence that came with age. When the Proprietor passes by with his candelabra, the dim glow throws an uncanny awareness in painted eyes that had not blinked in many years, eyes heavy and laden with dust. 

The young boy refuses to meet the wine-ripe gaze of those who came before. 

The room is as grand as the foyer and similarly furnished with imposing pieces fashioned from dark wood. The boy had walked a great distance to reach the house and his movements are dull with sleep. After drawing close the heavy silk brocade over the windows, he leaves the boy with the candelabra to while away the empty silence of a night without birdsong or the chirps of short-lived insects. 

When he wakes his guest, the boy remains dressed in his walking clothes upon the sheets. The candelabra on the nightstand still nurturing gentle flames lapping with thirst upon the wax. He withdraws a perfectly pressed daysuit from a large oak wardrobe and invites him to breakfast.

The boy sits up slowly like molten chocolate, eyes leaden with restless sleep and confused with the unending night. He wordlessly walks over to the end of the bed to make study the complicated garments. He seems to not piece together how the garters would hold up his stockings or to properly tuck in his shirt. He takes a few brief attempts at securing the ribbon around his collar but that quickly becomes an impossibility, so he tucks it into the pocket of his coat and heads for the parlor. 

Without the heat of the fireplace, the hall was chill with the memory of winter seeping through hidden seams. Unlike before, he could not avoid seeing his own picture in its place next to those of the House. He appears older in his portrait and drawn with sharper lines that he hasn’t yet seen on the round outline of his face and cheeks and would not see for many years to come. He looks dignified, unyielding, and imposing. He looks like his father, which was strange because he’s always resembled his mother. 

His mother with her soft hands and goldspun hair like cattails. Where there were cattails there was water, and where there was water there was life. 

He blinks twice to clear the fragrance of sleep from his mind and realizes that he is wearing the same clothing as his painted twin. So absorbed is he in this image that the boy does not notice the Proprietor standing silently against the other wall. 

To his credit, he does not jump, only commands that he be presented to breakfast. The spread has been prepared in the parlor, and he takes his milk, tea, and scones there under the cool glow of the moon. 

He asks for honey, because it has always been the balm for a sleepless night. His wish is granted, but the Proprietor reminds him of the rot. 

“Do not concern yourself.” He waves the Proprietor away. He moves back but does not leave the parlor. 

“It is my duty as a butler to concern myself with your health.” His voice is low and deferent. It has a silky, placating quality that makes him suspect he is being treated as a child. 

The boy frowns, but does not disagree.

“If you are to be my butler you must not neglect your other duties.” 

The Butler crosses the room in one pace and leans in to his height, red eyes seizing him in a strange spell. Without pause, he retrieves the cup from the boy’s hands and sets it down on the table, pulls him to his feet, and proceeds to correct the artful disarray he spent a half hour making. When he rises from one knee, the boy catches the sleeve of his dark coat with porcelain fingers. It might have been shame, or the static of the woolen fabric, for he feels a foreign electricity and rears from the touch. 

Dragging his eyes away from the fire of an icy gaze, he silently places the ribbon from his coat pocket in the Butler’s hands. He wonders if the dark figure is chastising him as he drags his pointed nails slowly along the cool silk. If he is, he wonders if he should be indignant. His face is art and science, in perfect Harmonices Mundi, and too precise to belong to a living creature, and so he is not sure if he can reprimand such a thing.

He lifts the boy’s chin with a gloved finger to smooth down the collar and fasten the black silk. In light of his oversight, the Butler takes a moment to inspect his work. The stockings were now appropriately secured, shirt properly tucked, and bow presented neatly as if the boy were a gift.

“I will not tolerate impudence from a servant.” 

The Butler promptly bows and moves to clear the table. 

Silence reigns for the rest of the day, and the next, and the next. A lord does not _ converse _ with a servant. It was just those two beings in the large and empty manor, and so he does not speak with anyone at all. All day, the boy entertains himself with books and balance sheets and tries to tire himself so much that sleep comes easy. 

He thinks he falls asleep every night in a chair at a wide oak writing desk clearly made for someone much larger than life, but always wakes up underneath quilted bed sheets on his four poster bed, a mockery of the inverted manor. 

He has nightmares as he drifts into sleep. The last memory of his House relives its violent end nightly with ferocious heat that rends the bones to ash, crackle of flames that lick at the undersides of his eyelids, and the painful smoke that draws tears from parched eyes. But when he opens them, the manor is unharmed in an endless cycle of rebirth of that most painful moment. 

It is difficult to differentiate the passing of time, when night never bleeds into dawn. So he begins calling it waking terrors, until it becomes impossible to tell truth from lies.

The boy does not know how long it is until he starts to forget what his voice sounds like and takes to reading his magazines out loud. He thinks others who arrived before may have felt the same way. The Butler’s silence so deafening until they had no choice but to speak to clear the air. 

He will not be like the others. 


	3. The Soldier

He never speaks of his time in the war. He thought he might tell his sweetheart one day or his son when he became a man. But his son had never been born and his love ran off with another long before he would know that he had died in that war. 

The sun there burns low, but scorches the skin and scalds the jugular before you knew it as if the sky was a cast-iron pot and it had no other purpose than to cook up everything inside in a dirt brown Maconochie stew. And like a stew, the world needs to be stirred up every so often. 

It was the type of heat made men always angry. Rows break out for no other reason than the itch of a bad sunburn and incessant bark of the drongo-cuckoo that looks too much like a crow. 

But the one thing he hates most is sand. Sand in his shoes, his hair, his gums, his socks, his underwear. Sand in his bedroll so that he cannot turn one way or another at night without hearing the crackle of a million grains of it. Rough little bits of sand every time he bites into those crusty white biscuits you can break a tooth on.

He can never forget the feeling of grit in his mouth, tasting it from the canteen and pissing it back out again. It does not matter if wipes himself down or takes a swim, even the river was full of it. Sun makes men angry, but it was the sand that drove him crazy. 

It was maybe the one-hundred and fortieth day of sun and sand when his tent-mate wakes him up in a crackling fire that smells vaguely of salt and human terror and shoves him into the bush. He is carrying a pound of sand in his clothes but little else.

He drags the weight of a dozen lives further into the shadows of the swamp where the rebels lay their camps to search for the stolen pride of a wasting general.

Shots tear through the tins, tents, and bedrolls and the makeshift camp erupts in chaos. Lying upon the sand is a veined hand creased with labor and tightly wrapped around a cigarette tin. A single jigsaw piece in a dozen all frustrated and indecipherable. But he wasn’t too fond of puzzles and books, and was more distracted by the red-haired Gibson on the face. 

It was impossible to see where the gunfire was coming from when nothing was untouched by the bullets. Even now, all he can think about is the sand. Ancient layers of sediment exposed in whirlwinds so thick it hurt to breathe, like the sand dunes in Shahrazad’s stories his mama used to tell. So unlike the bogs he called home, and so dark the angry sun disappeared. 

In the black noon and amid the wet thirst of the jungle, he crawls belly deep in sediment and pulls himself along mangrove roots, trying to find some advantage for himself. He’s halfway up the bank when he spots his tentmate and the freckled runner who wouldn’t stop weeping over his sick mother when he was first assigned. Got a rough beating from the men because no one could sleep and his nose hasn’t been straight since. Never stopped crying, just learned to hide it in his sleeve. They could still hear it on quiet nights and the days were always too loud and nights always too quiet and every time couldn’t help but think of their own mothers and fathers, children and  _ loves _ , and the chances of seeing them one last time. It damn hurt morale, but no one could bring himself to set him, or his nose, right. He has that wide, red-rimmed, doe-eyed look when he spots him now too. His friend soon notices him from across the bank and points northwest, the same direction as the runner’s crooked Rudolph nose and he knows he’s been crying again.

He briefly spies a few men crouching over the ridge. One head peaks over to check if everyone is dead. No less than four. There’s no way the runner could take even one of those men, and even if the two of them could take two each, they’d have to get in close from this angle. He scans the area for any weapons he can get his hands on when he sees his tentmate pull out a handgun and get a stupid look on his face. 

His tent mate had a smart air about him. All deep features and angular jaw. That face gave him the great advantage of immediate confidence. It was a face that could have let him become Mayor, Senator even if he was so inclined. That was how he convinced his folks to let their son decay in a dark, sweating jungle. In this moment, he is sure that he has himself fooled too. But after long nights when neither could sleep and hearing his tentmate speak endlessly of duty and sacrifice, he knows that he is actually very stupid. As a reckless idiot himself, he knows that beneath that confident smile, the man is very, very stupid and very afraid.

His only chance now is to find a weapon and quickly, the same way his friend knows his only chance was to start before he could be stopped. All he can think about is how he ended up next to the cook’s station. He can still smell the pancakes he helped make. But even that gives way to a foul smell above the naked earth, one that is somehow familiar. 

Then he remembers the bog. Marsh gas. Then fat fingers and a tanned hand. Then that tin of cigarettes. A faded portrait. She has red hair and the barest hint of a smile. He cradles the stub in his lap as he frees the woman from its lifeless clutch. He lights the match. For a second, thinks he’s home again when another bullet sounds.

The soldier chokes on his cold coffee and the Proprietor passes him a clean rag. He accepts it with gratitude to clean his mouth and stubble. He stares at his tin for a few moments before wiping it along the rim as well.

“Drinking out of this...I half expected grit. It’s good coffee.”

The man sitting across from him takes the compliment in silence, but he never doubts he is listening. His posture is a bit too intent. A large brown moth drifts near his coffee, but he doesn’t bother to swat it away. At this distance, he can see the coarse hairs that make up its antennae and the lashes around its false eyes as it comes to rest on the lip of his tin. Its wings beat flightlessly. 

“How long you been running this joint?” He asks as he takes another gulp of coffee and swishes the bitter drink around his mouth. The moth flees at the last moment. 

“A long time.” 

The soldier chuckles to himself that same ironic laugh he’s made a habit of to keep himself from crying at the worst of times. “Feels like a long time. Feels like it was yesterday. Can’t say I ever thought I’d be back here.” 

The loud rush of the swollen river is the only answer he receives. Not a single bird croaks. Dead, drowned probably.

“Say, what’s an elderly gent like you doing out here in the middle of the tropics half a world from civilization?” 

A frown comes over his aristocratic features, and he thinks it’s the first time he’s seen such an extreme reaction from his stoic companion. 

“One place is as good as the next. Sometimes there are letters. People like you come every so often. You come to rest and be on your way.” 

He wonders why the Postmaster has chosen to remain in a place where lives only briefly intersect before departing. Since that day he has carried too much sand to ever catch up to the ones who left him behind. 

“Guiding lost souls, like a crow,” he muses, thinking of the folktales his mama was so fond of. 

When he glances up, the Postmaster is smiling a smile that splits his face in a way that makes the soldier shudder in the dense wet heat, and he’s not sure why he ever wanted to see more than a tepid expression.

“For all those who returned, many more never found their way out. We all left something behind in this swamp.” He takes another swig from his cold coffee, conscious of the path it takes down. “I suppose I’m here to get it back.”

The postmaster nods simply. 

His coffee is gone now and he regrets how quickly it went when he can no longer hide behind the tin when telling his story. 

“Say, you have a fiddle?” 

With a straight posture and flat tone, he replies, “I do.” 

“Ah, you don’t need to get it now.”

“Nonsense.” The gentleman rises and disappears somewhere behind the curtained frame.

One half of the station had sunk so deeply into the land he had to lean back to keep from slipping. He wonders if the old postmaster intends to die here. He is too soft spoken and talks too nicely to be buried here. He has not come across anyone else in his week trapped by the rain. If the sky had not split open, would there have been anyone the man wanted to see?

The man returns with an exquisite violin made of glossy dark wood. The wax gleams in the moonlight.

“This is...how do you manage to keep it so fresh?” He asks, thinking of the wet heat of the jungle and the way it imposes upon everything inside. 

He balances the bow upon the strings shakily, softly, tenderly and hears the cleanest sound he’s ever heard himself play. He quickly sets it down because he has never held something so fine in his hands and not ruined it before. 

“Had my own fiddle once. Used to play at mealtimes and get the boys thinking of home. It ain’t cost much, and the tone’s not rich. Half the time I had to keep screwing it up to fix the pitch. But, I suppose I still miss it. I know the feel of the worn wood against my cheek like a lover’s embrace.” He laughs, “Sounds like I miss my girl more than I thought I did.”

His voice shakes and so he reaches into his shirt pocket for a fresh cigarette. The tin is greased with fat and so he takes a while to get it open. When he does, the elderly man has a match at the ready.

“It’s yours to play, until you find the things you’ve lost,” the Postmaster says simply. The soldier glances up at him, but there is no sign of untruth or regret.

“You real sure about that? There’s a lot I’m looking for, more than most men. This is an awful nice piece to be giving away for free.”

He tucks the cigarette tin back into his pocket but is still too afraid to touch the violin.

“Pay me back when you have recovered what you lost. A good tale or two would be enough.”

With smoke in his lungs, his breathing smooths out. His girl always wanted him to quit this habit but he couldn’t give it up and she gave up on him. He thinks of how upset she was the last time, when her belly was swollen like a ripe watermelon, and puts it out in the last of his coffee before tossing the dregs into the river. 

The postmaster studies his movements with an almost scientific curiosity, his fingers spelling the gestures out on the bent wood rails.

“I hope I won’t disappoint you. I’ll have to see if there are any good stories to tell.”

The postmaster’s elegant fingers still on an imperfect notch of the wood.

“Any will do. As you say, there is not much in the way of company here, and you have your mother’s stories.”

The postmaster collects his coffee tin, pausing as though he is reading his fortunes in the coffee grounds stuck to the bottom. Then he is alone again on the porch. As he draws his bow across the violin strings, spilling music into the empty night, he wonders when he’s ever talked about his mama.


End file.
